Despite Spencer Admin Promise, “Sunshined” Documents Have Remained Hidden

Despite telling this publication in November of 2025 that documents requested through the city’s “Sunshine Portal” would once again be made publicly viewable, as they were during the prior administration, they remain hidden from the public. Under prior administrations, documents furnished in response to public record requests were made publicly available via the website’s archives. Any researcher, journalist, or other interested party could search the archives, potentially locating a document. This would mean that they wouldn’t need to file their own public record request, saving time for both themselves and city staff.

The change in practice has continued to draw complaints from local transparency advocates, who don’t understand why the city chose to stop posting the documents to the public archive. “The city’s failure to post responsive records for the public to view and download from the Public Records Archive indicates that the Spencer administration doesn’t practice authentic transparency. Restricting access just to the person requesting a record equates to fake transparency,” said Gerry Connolly, a longtime local government watchdog. Connolly further echoed concerns that the changes inevitably slow down the process and generate numerous requests for the same information. “The city’s current policy of restricting the online availability of a record to the requester only is opaque and also inefficient government. Members of the public will doubtless request the same records; more staff time is expended fulfilling duplicate requests,” said Connolly

While meeting with Connolly at a local coffee shop, he demonstrated how documents related to older requests could be accessed via the archive. This contracts to recent months, when no digital documents have been made publicly available on completed requests, even when they indicate that documents were provided in response to the query. Connelly used one of his own completed requests to demonstrate how he could see documents, while this reporter was unable to see documents related to the request on his own account.

For the city’s part, Communications Director Holly Roberts has again committed to making documents available via the website’s archive. “Happy to confirm that we have corrected the issue on our end and moving forward, the compliance team will make all requests publicly available, as long as they don’t contain PII (personally identifiable information) or any pending litigation,” stated Roberts.

Connolly and other City Hall observers say that they will be continuing to monitor the archives for the promise of again making these documents accessible to the public.